Torture Is Way Cool
Watch the talking heads at Fox laugh and joke about how absurd it is to use a word like “torture” to describe bringing human beings to the brink of suffocation by drowning and keeping them from sleeping for 11 days at a stretch ( Mike Huckabee to Ken and Barbie, who sit there giggling and cracking up: “They’ve been putting me under sleep deprivation for years now and it’s about time that we uncovered it!”) — and then at the same time exclaim to each other about how effective this nothing-close-to-torture stuff is at getting prisoners to “spill the beans.” Making sense is not a priority with these morons.
Setting aside the journalistic malpractice, just on a human level, the people in this video are monsters. I’m using that word with intention and deliberation. These are evil, wicked, wretched human beings — all the more so for the one who claims to be a devout Christian. He is no more a Christian than I am.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
26 Responses to “Torture Is Way Cool”
I'm tired of people saying that torture is nothing… that “I've been sleep deprived for years” or “It's little more than hazing.” And then go on to say that these acts made the terrorists spill the beans and help prevent other terrorist attacks. If torture was so banal, then what is the point of it?
Furthermore it was something like 9 years between the attacks on the World Trade Center. It takes years for terrorists to plan and carry out their missions.
Bush put in place many programs and policies aimed at stopping terrorists and to date no one in the Bush administration can point to anything these terrorists spilled which was new or helped prevent another attack.
These Republicans who are attacking Obama over his release of the CIA memos…. Are they saying that none of Bush's other anti-terrorist programs have been effective? No one has mentioned it and to hear them speak these torture programs are the best invention since white bread and are what kept the country safe.
Amen, Kathy.
“Illegitimi” Non Carborundum, as they'll try!
Dorian
So is the Death Penalty, which is why we do neither in public.
As with most things, liberals can’t be honest.
Torture has a meaning. Up until the waterboarding issue, what ran through your minds when the word “torture” was used?
Did it involve excruciating pain, permanent physical damage, images of medieval racks and hot irons?
People have been tortured throughout the ages and continue to be tortured (real, honest to God torture) today. By lumping these relatively harmless techniques in with actual atrocities demeans the horror and minimizes the crimes that real victims and perpetrators experience.
Just to gain the shock value of using a word that is inappropriate for the context, you devalue everything that has gone before or will happen in the future.
jwest
Waterboarding is considered torture in the civilized world. Indeed, the fact that the legal briefs admit that US service personnel or subjected to “one or two” sessions but no more, kind of demonstrates that our government agrees. The fact that one prisoner received this treatment 183 times is barbaric.
Check out what the Geneva convention says we, as signatories, must follow. You would have us believe that unless hot irons and racks are employed, then it's OK.
Hypothetical, what number between 1 and 183 times would YOU start thinking to yourself, “Hey, these guys are torturing me?” US Seals get at most two experiences with waterboarding, what's your number?
Good try, Jwest.
The fact that “people have been tortured throughout the ages and continue to be tortured” doesn't hack it. This is Americ a 2009, and “we don't torture”, or at least that's what our former President claimed on numerous occasions…and torture is illegal
Your insinuation that the torture done at our hands does not”involve excruciating pain, permanent physical damage, images of medieval racks and hot irons” doesn't hack it either, for two reasons. 1. Do you know that to be for a fact? How about verifying it for yourself. 2. Even if it doesn't—which I doubt very much–I doubt it, for example, that a judge or jury would consider the fact that a murderer did not cause much pain in his act of murder as an extenuating circumstance.. Furthermore, we no longer live in the middle ages…and torture is still illegal.
“By lumping these relatively harmless techniques in with actual atrocities demeans the horror and minimizes the crimes that real victims and perpetrators experience.” No one is “lumping in” what you call these “harmless techniques” with other atrocities. If one uses this logic, perhaps we should not prosecute petty theft because this minimizes “the crimes that real victims and perpetrators experience” such as rape and murder??
“Just to gain the shock value of using a word that is inappropriate for the context, you devalue everything that has gone before or will happen in the future.” The “shock value” is not in investigating crimes, the shock value is in the crime itself.
It is exactly because we don't want such crimes to happen in the future that they should be investigated.
And jwest, liberals don't own “dishonesty”. From sea to shining sea, liberals and conservatives practice dishonesty from their personal to professional lives. Let's leave that alone.
Torture, for me, is having to watch the talking heads on Fox talk about torture. Just sayin'…
You're right jwest, because none of these techniques left any marks on their bodies, they weren't tortured. Guess the Soviets and Nazis “never tortured” as well. Only the Spanish Inquisition.
Also, if you oppose torture, you're a liberal. lawl Forward, my cheese eating surrender monkey friends! Forward!
Actually, the drowning torture (aka waterboarding) was used to torture people during the Spanish Inquisition. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge used it, too. So did the Nazis.
The thrust of my comment was the use of the word “torture”.
Apparently, there is no middle ground, no appropriate word that would indicate a practice that is between fraternity hazing and peeling the skin with a blowtorch and pliers.
This type of definitive speaking does have its benefits, so let’s make sure we continue the tradition here at The Moderate Voice.
There will be no gradations between free market capitalist and gulag running communist.
Every politician needs to be perfectly clean or they are, by definition, corrupt scum.
This will be fun.
jwest
You failed to answer my earlier question.
Hypothetical, what number between 1 and 183 times would YOU start thinking to yourself, “Hey, these guys are torturing me?” US Seals get at most two experiences with waterboarding, what's your number?
And remember, be definitive!
HemmD,
Before I give you an answer, we need to deal with those tricky “word” things again.
From the way your question is structured, you seem to imply that our Navy Seals undergo a maximum of 2 “waterboardings”. However, using the memo language and definitions, what our Seals go through in 2 of these sessions may be what you would call 50 to 60 “waterboardings”.
Please see this article at Just One Minute to help explain the math involved.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/04/i…
Is there some point at which I might classify waterboarding as torture? Perhaps, but it would need to be so excessive, so outrageous that permanent damage was imminent.
jwest,
Your knowledge of the history of torture is astoundingly limited, which the rest of the commenters here have dutifully pointed out.
I wonder what you'd think if you or your family members were subject to similar techniques at your local police department. I don't suppose you'd offer yourself up to experience some of these frat hazing rituals. Also, I suppose you don't think John McCain was tortured either. Stress positions aint sh*t right?
Chris…..Chris………………..Chris,
It always amazes me when someone mistakes quantity for quality. When you have a half dozen people all chanting the same misinformation, it doesn’t make it true.
Your argument is degrading because you see the point. You jumped on the “torture” bandwagon because it was George Bush and Dick Cheney, but the left’s version of events keeps falling apart.
Now, after being exposed to logic, reason and the truth, you find yourself wishing you were on the correct side of the discussion. Go ahead. Come over to the light. You’ll feel cleaner knowing you don’t have to defend the indefensible.
McCain had both enhanced interrogation and torture performed on him during his captivity. Surely, only the old Chris would argue that everything that happened to him during his years in prison were “torture”.
John McCain was not tortured, by your definition. Just subjected to relatively harmless procedures. No missing digits, so that whole war hero thing is just him exaggerating, just as are all the POWs who underwent “uncomfortable interrogations”. But you know what? This is for a judge and jury to decide. That's how we handle “alleged” crimes here. Any problem with that?
jwest,
I don't know how you can read the list of what was done to these people and not agree that it was torture. Even if you thought sleep deprivation for 10 days wasn't torture, then surely being slammed against a wall, and drowned multiple times during that period certainly adds up to torture.
And you keep asking for definitions and clarification, but it's already out there. So if you want to argue some other definition is better, then go ahead and stop pussyfooting around.
Chris,
As a liberal in high school, I’m sure you were slammed against a wall now and then.
Do you now give lectures as a “Torture Survivor”?
When in college you may have gone a few nights without sleep.
Do you feel a kinship with Holocaust victims?
Don’t you believe the faux outrage at techniques that are unbelievably mild in the world of real torture has gone far enough?
As a conservative, I’m sorry that methods we need to employ to keep you and the rest of the country safe offends your delicate sensibilities, but it’s a necessary truth in this less-than-ideal world of ours. We don’t “torture”, because torture is not an honorable way to treat an enemy. We do, however, have no compunction about bitch slapping a few terrorists around to gain valuable information.
Thank you jwest, or should I call you Col. Nathan Jessep?
You're ignoring the totality of the torture program and instead isolating individual techniques to make it sound silly. Color me unconvinced.
Also, I'm a little confused. Are you arguing that torture is necessary, or that we didn't torture? You seem to be skipping back and forth.
Quantity and quality both matter. Drip a water droplet onto someone's forehead? Not torture. Drip water droplets slowly onto someone's forehead for days on end? That's called “Chinese Water Torture”. Or is that not torture in your “words mean things” sense?
And why do feel the need to say “words mean things” whenever someone says something you don't like? “Words mean things” is incredibly oxymoronic when coming from one of your comments, in that it means, essentially, nothing.
Eh, looks like the “reply” function isn't working. jwest — my last comment was for you, as I'm sure you can figure out.
Pwned.
Just so we're clear about what you're condoning, jwest and other torture apologists. This is testimony that is corroborated by similar testimony. The full transcript is here, should you want even more detail:
Together with other detainees, we were made to sit on the floor and were dragged to the interrogation room. This so called room is in fact a toilet (approximately 2m by 2m) and was flooded with water and human waste up to my ankle level. I was asked to sit in the filthy water while the American interrogator stood outside the door, with the translator. After the interrogation, I would be removed from the toilet, and before the next detainee is put into the toilet, the guards would urinate into the filthy water in front of the other detainees. They then beat me repeatedly and put me in a truck to transfer me to another part of the Abu Ghraib prison. The living conditions in the camp were very bad. Each tent would have 45 to 50 detainees and the space for each detainee measured only 30cm by 30cm. We had to wait for 2 to 3 hours just to go to the toilets. There was very little water. Each tent was given only 60 litres of water daily to be shared by the detainees. This water was used for drinking and washing and cleaning the wounds after the torture sessions. They would also make us to stand for long hours. During my captivity in the camp, I was interrogated and tortured twice. Each time I was threatened that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay prison. During this period, I heard from my fellow detainees that they were tortured by cigarette burns, injected with hallucinating chemicals and had their rectum inserted with various types of instruments, such as wooden sticks and pipes. They would return to the camp, bleeding profusely. Some had their bones broken.When I was brought to the cell, they asked me in Arabic to strip but when I refused, they tore my clothes and tied me up again. They then dragged me up a flight of stairs and when I could not move, they beat me repeatedly. When I reached the top of the stairs, they tied me to some steel bars. They then threw at me human waste and urinated on me.Next, they put a gun to my head and said that they would execute me there. Another soldier would use a megaphone to shout at me using abusive words and to humiliate me. During this time, I could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured. This went on till the next morning.This Israeli dressed in civilian clothes tortured me by inserting in turn first with a jagged wooden stick into my rectum and then with the barrel of a rifle. I was cut inside and bled profusely. During this time, when any guard walked past me, they would beat me. I had no food for 36 hours.The next morning, the Israeli interrogator came to my cell and tied me to the grill of the cell and he then played the pop song, “By the Rivers of Babylon” by Pop Group Boney M, continuously until the next morning. The effect on me was that I lost my hearing, and I lost my mind. It was very painful and I lost consciousness. I only woke up when the Israeli guard poured water on my head and face. When I regain consciousness, he started beating me again and demanded that I tell him of the names of resistance fighters and what activities that I did against the American soldiers. When I told him that I did not know any resistance fighters, he kicked me many times.I was kept in the cell without clothes for two weeks. During this time, an American guard by the name of “Grainer” accompanied by a Moroccan Jew called Idel Palm ( also known as Abu Hamid) came to my cell and asked me about my bandaged hand which was injured before I was arrested. I told him that I had an operation. He then pulled the bandage which stained with blood from my hand and in doing so, tore the skin and flesh from my hands. I was in great pain and when I asked him for some pain killers, he stepped on my hands and said “this is American pain killer” and laughed at me. The interrogators returned and forcefully placed me on top of a carton box containing can food. They then connected the wires to my fingers and ordered me to stretch my hand out horizontally, and switched on the electric power. As the electric current entered my whole body, I felt as if my eyes were being forced out and sparks flying out. My teeth were clattering violently and my legs shaking violently as well. My whole body was shaking all over.I was electrocuted on three separate sessions. On the first two sessions, I was electrocuted twice, each time lasting few minutes. On the last session, as I was being electrocuted, I accidentally bit my tongue and was bleeding from the mouth. They stop the electrocution and a doctor was called to attend to me. I was lying down on the floor. The doctor poured some water into my mouth and used his feet to force open my mouth. He then remarked, “There is nothing serious, continue!” Then he left the room. However, the guard stopped the electrocution as I was bleeding profusely from my mouth and blood was all over my blanket and body. But they continued to beat me. After some time, they stopped beating me and took me back to my cell.I was then left alone in my cell for 49 days. During this period of detention, they stopped torturing me. At the end of the 49th day, I was transferred back to the camp, in tent C and remained there for another 45 days. I was informed by a prisoner that he over heard some guards saying that I was wrongly arrested and that I would be released.I was released in the beginning of March 2004. I was put into a truck and taken to a highway and then thrown out. A passing car stopped and took me home.
As a liberal in high school, I’m sure you were slammed against a wall now and then.
I'm not Chris, but I was a liberal in high school, and I was never slammed against a wall, ever.
When in college you may have gone a few nights without sleep.
Yes, but that wasn't torture, because the sleepless nights were under my control and I could choose to sleep anytime I wanted to.
Are you really as stupid as your question makes you sound? Or do you know that your question is stupid but you just don't care?
Do you feel a kinship with Holocaust victims?
Yes, I do. Both my parents survived the Holocaust. My grandmother (father's mother) did not survive the Holocaust. She died in Sobibor. About three-quarters of my father's extended family died in Sobibor, in Auschwitz, and various other extermination camps.
Do you feel a sense of revulsion or shame at using the memory of the extermination of European Jewry to justify torture by the U.S. government?
Don’t you believe the faux outrage at techniques that are unbelievably mild in the world of real torture has gone far enough?
There is nothing “faux” about my outrage, or Chris's, or Dorian's, or anyone else's. And clearly our outrage has not gone far enough, given that you continue to delude yourself that human beings can be subjected to physical and/or mental pain or suffering that is both strong enough to force them to say things their interrogators want them to say, and not really torture.
We don’t “torture”, because torture is not an honorable way to treat an enemy. We do, however, have no compunction about bitch slapping a few terrorists around to gain valuable information.
What you mean is that you, and Bush and Cheney et al., don't have any compunction about torturing human beings in U.S. custody who may or may not be terrorists and who may or may not have the information you think they have — but you don't CALL it torture because torture is not an honorable way to treat an enemy.
Just so we're clear about what you're condoning, jwest and other torture apologists. This is testimony that is corroborated by similar testimony.
I don't believe in the death penalty, and I don't make exceptions, but if I did….
As it is, the direct perpetrators of these horrors, and the high-ranking senior officials who ordered, authorized, and condoned them (I'm looking at you, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, and William Haynes) should be prosecuted and, if found to be guilty, should never see the outside of a prison again.
I forgot the Big Kahuna himself. Can't leave him out.